Anti-Semitism still common in Germany, study finds
People walk in front of a big wall draped with flags with Nazi symbols in Berlin’s Lustgarten in front of the Old Museum. A new study has found that 20 percent of Germans still harbor latent anti-Semitism.
Anti-Semitism is still entrenched in German society, a new study has found.
According to a survey funded by the Bundestag, Germany's parliament, 20 percent of Germans agree with anti-Semitic statements such as "Jews have too much power in business," The Associated Press reported.
The study, which is set to be presented Monday, puts Germany in the middle of the pack in terms of anti-Semitic sentiment in Europe. The report found more latent anti-Jewish sentiment in Poland, Hungary and Portugal, and less in Italy, Britain, the Netherlands and France.
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As the study reads,
“It should be underscored, that notwithstanding the never-ending discussion regarding the National-Socialistic (Nazi) past and the turning of the anti-Semitism question largely into a taboo in the public domain – the Germans have accumulated and registered as their own many characteristics of anti-Semitism, like in other countries in Western Europe."
However, the report showed that 90 percent of anti-Semitic crimes are committed by right-wing extremists, the AP reported. There are around 26,000 such extremists in Germany, according to official estimates.
In April 2002, the Sigmund Freud Institute in Frankfurt and the University of Leipzig conducted a joint study which found that 20 percent of German respondents agreed that "Jews are to blame for the major conflicts in the world," and another 26 percent shared that opinion "to some extent," according to the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs.
Despite the continued presence of anti-Semitic sentiment, Germany's Jewish community has been growing steadily since the fall of the Berlin Wall, BBC News reported.
Before 1989, the Jewish population was below 30,000. but an influx of Jews, mainly from the former Soviet Union, has raised the number to 200,000, according to the BBC.
On Friday, Germany marked the 70th anniversary of the infamous Wannsee Conference, where plans were laid out for the extermination of the Jewish population of Europe. Germany's president Christian Wulff said Friday that the country's grim history still caused "anger and shame," Der Spiegel Online reported.
"It is important and a national task to keep the memory [of the Holocaust] alive," Wulff said.
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